Learning to Paint with Acrylic

FurEver Friends 30x24 Acrylic on stretch canvas

My apologies for not posting for a while, gratefully my commissions have kept me busy. Now that the lazy days of summer are here, I have a little more time to catch up on my blogging. 2017 has been an exciting year of learning new application and approaches to my creative journey. I took an acrylic workshop in January with the very talented artist Jane Slivka. Working with Acrylic paint is very different from watercolor mainly because you can use white paint, repaint over an area without making it muddy and create huge pieces.

The basic painting steps that Jane Slivka taught were simple. First, you paint your canvas a Cadmium Red also known as a "undercoating," allowing a warmth to your finished painting, as well as tiny slivers of bright orange peeking through as you cut-in your background.

---

Next, take a dark Hooker green (which looks like black) and loosely paint the general shapes of your composition. Adding white to build your details. In the reference photo, I didn't like that the dog's eyes were closed, so I used a different photo of a Yorkie to show more expression on the pup's face. 

---

Reference photo

Yorkie's eyes reference photo

Adding layers of color on top of each other the painting starts to take form. My style of painting is loose impressionistic with a playful touch. Notice how the orange undercoat pop through on these close ups of the finished painting.